


Subverting the genre

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Sholay | Embers (1975)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-24
Updated: 2007-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:48:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1625093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Story by solvent90</p><p>Jai/Veeru, AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Subverting the genre

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Dhobi ki Kutti

 

 

"To draw the "homosocial" back into the orbit of "desire", of the potentially erotic, then, is to hypothesise the potential unbrokenness of a continuum between homosocial and homosexual - a continuum whose visibility, for men, in our society, is radically disrupted." \- Eve Sedgwick, _Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire_

"The secret to Bollywood's worldwide appeal, says Yash [Chopra], is that its films are "wholesome"--his favorite word. The Indian government has given him four national awards in the category of "Best Film for Providing Popular and Wholesome Entertainment." He won't allow kissing in his movies." \- from the _National Geographic Magazine_ , February 2005

There's always _one_ girl, in every village. Half-bold, half-shy, kohled eyes, girlish slender hips under the flaring village skirt, pretty braided hair. They have a type. 

It always ends the same way - Jai flips his coin, and either it falls somehow wrong or Veeru jumps him before it lands and they find themselves wrestling and choking in the dust, laughing and struggling and entangled in each other, while the girl's father has long since borne her off. It always ends with Veeru's head trapped somewhere in the vicinity of Jai's lean thigh, Jai's hand gripping his hair to hold him down and both of them laughing wildly, desperately. Brothers.

They're just like brothers, in all the ways that count. Veeru can't really remember _meeting_ Jai, even though they didn't grow up together or anything; he just remembers that for a while he was miserably alone, stealing just enough for bread and drink and barely escaping with his life half the time, and then suddenly there was Jai and it become fun, a reckless thrilling game, and they were untouchable and together. Curled into each other against the cold in their cramped one-bunk room - fuck, he hopes this job won't keep them in this slum of a suburb longer than a week - Veeru tucks his head closer to Jai's warm sweat-smelling chest, brushes his cheek against the comforting roughness of Jai's chest hair and thinks how lucky he is to have a brother like him. 

*

He dreams that he's alone. On a hill somewhere, blood-stained grey grass, rifles and broken glass scattered around, and no Jai. A - the - coin in his hand, and that's what brings it home to him with awful clarity. Jai _never_ lets that coin out of his pocket except to flip it and he never lets it out of his own hands; he won't even let Veeru make the toss, ever. If he has the coin - 

He must make some kind of noise in his sleep because he wakes up just then, to Jai kneeling over him, slapping lightly at his cheek, rough and worried. He wants to be embarrassed, but both Jai's hands are cupping his face, the way he does when he's checking Veeru's eyes after a head-blow, and there's nothing in his eyes but half-sleepy concern, his thighs warm on either side of Veeru's body.

"What? What did you dream?"

He doesn't know. It slips away as he tries to remember, and he shrugs, shaking off the concern. "There was this girl, man, she was -" and Jai laughs as he sketches out an exaggerated hour-glass, and laughs again, loud and raucously familiar, as Veeru describes all the imaginary, salacious details of the dream and complains about being woken. Jai's hand stays in his hair, idly ruffling, and he feels warm to the pit of his stomach, talking at random about tits the size of mangoes and round hips, red mouth, all his attention focused on the scritch of Jai's long fingers over his scalp, the wicker bed creaking under their combined weight.

*

He dreams again the next night. It's the same hill, the same empty sky. This time, he knows that if he can flip the coin right, Jai will come back; it just has to come up tails. 

He flips; again, again, again. Heads. Heads. Heads. He wakes up shaking.

He hasn't woken Jai this time and he's snoring, mouth soft with sleep, cheek pillowed on one hand and his long bony legs drawn up to his torso. In the pale light, his eyelashes look very dark, thick and long on his cheek. 

Jai isn't going to leave him. They're brothers, best friends, unbreakable. It's a promise he's repeated to himself hundreds of times before, but tonight is the first time it feels terrifyingly grey and insubstantial in the wake of the dream, against the solid _knowledge_ it's left of Jai gone beyond recall. Of the coin, coming up heads again and again and again. It doesn't feel like a dream. It feels like a premonition, fate, and usually he's the one who scoffs the loudest at all that rubbish, but that doesn't mean it's not true.

Jai snuffles in his sleep, turns over; and the coin falls out of his pocket, onto the bed between them. Veeru stares at it. Heads. He can't breathe. It's superstitious and stupid, and Jai would put it down to one of Veeru's crazy freaks, but he puts his hand out anyway, just in case, and turns it over. Heads.

He hears the sound he makes this time, the low strangled whine of it, and when Jai jerks awake and blinks at him, he can't bluff it out. He just stares and Jai's eyes flicker from his face to the coin and then fix there. 

"Oh," he says, mouth curving down, and he looks embarrassed and half-amused, scratching his chest apologetically, "yeah, that," and Veeru knows he should laugh or be indignant that the fucker's been using a double-headed coin all this time, but his heart is still hammering in his rib-cage and he still feels, suddenly, claustrophobically, trapped. The coin is always going to come up heads, whatever he does. It feels like a death-warrant. Jai's.

"Veeru?" Jai says, frowning now. He's frowning, deep lines between his thickly defined eyebrows, his expression half-worried, half-annoyed, and alive, so alive with his black eyes snapping questions and his cheek rough with stubble, and his mouth - 

Veeru's fingers are on his mouth. That - he's not supposed to do that. There are some things even brothers don't do. But Jai doesn't move or protest, just blinks up at him, incredibly slowly, as Veeru shakingly traces the full, familiar curve of Jai's bottom lip, his heart beating fit to break right through his chest, out of the trap. And go where? He stares the question at Jai, signalling for help, rescue, and Jai stays frozen, immobile, for one long drawn-out moment and then his tongue flickers out. He licks Veeru's finger-tip. 

Veeru finds, now, that he can't move, can't even blink. He feels like he can hear his pulse beating somewhere outside his body and like the air around them is shivering, dissolving, the colours changing; and it's Jai who sits up and kneels forward through that melting air, breathes roughly against Veeru's face for a moment before taking his jaw and drawing him up into a kiss. 

Jai's mouth. The rasp of his stubble, the long muscled body pressing heatedly down the length of Veeru's body, one thigh nudging between his legs, rubbing; and, in all that, it's only his _tongue_ , the lingering greedy way he's opening Veeru's mouth and tasting him that makes this something else, makes it obscene and new. Veeru groans a sound, panting; and when Jai bites his neck and shoves his hand into his jeans, he barely hears the coin clink forgotten to the floor. 

 


End file.
